The Daily Scoop Podcast

Legislation to improve federal agency oversight and management of software purchases passed the House on Wednesday, keeping top IT and software trade groups’ hopes alive that the bill will get through the Senate and become law before this congressional term is up. The Strengthening Agency Management and Oversight of Software Assets Act (H.R.1695) – better known as the SAMOSA Act — was introduced by Rep. Matt Cartwright, D-Pa., last year and co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of 20 House lawmakers. Calling the rooting out of waste, fraud and abuse a “signal mission” of the House Oversight Committee, Cartwight said the bill would ensure that federal agencies are required to conduct a “comprehensive assessment of their current software assets and restructure their operations to reduce unnecessary costs.” A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation to reauthorize and refocus the National Quantum Initiative after certain research and development activities in its initial five-year run lapsed in September. The National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization Act would authorize $2.7 billion for quantum R&D at federal agencies for the next five years and shift the initiative’s focus “from basic research to practical applications.” It would also expand the initiative to include agencies like the National Institutes of Health, the State Department and the Small Business Administration, according to a news release. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

David Shive is one of the longest-tenured CIOs in all of the federal government and serves as vice chair of the Federal CIO Council. He also helms the IT portfolio of one of the most innovative and forward-leaning agencies across the executive branch. As such, he’s an insightful leader with a strong read on the state of technology transformation across the federal government. FedScoop recently caught up with Shive on the sidelines of ACT-IAC’s Imagine Nation ELC event in Hershey, Pa. During our conversation, we touched on a variety of things, including trends in digital transformation that GSA and other agencies experienced over the past year, AI adoption and what’s next – as well as an interesting insight he picked up recently on where the U.S. stands compared to its allies in digital service delivery. Top lawmakers on the House Financial Services Committee are using the stretch run of this congressional term to address the impact artificial intelligence has on the finance and housing sectors. Reps. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif., the chair and ranking member of the committee, respectively, announced Monday the introduction of a resolution to acknowledge the rising use of AI in financial services and in the housing industry, as well as a bill that calls on financial regulatory agencies to study the benefits of the technology within the sector. The resolution and bill are the culmination of nearly a year of work from the committee’s bipartisan AI working group and come just days before a hearing that will explore how the technology is framing the future of finance. In an era where personal data is increasingly commodified, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is attempting to regulate the sprawling industry of data brokers. A newly proposed rule released Tuesday aims to put data brokers in line with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), ensuring accountability and consumer privacy amid widespread security issues. Initially established in 1970, the FCRA was one of the first pieces of legislation aimed at protecting consumer privacy. The proposed changes by the CFPB intend to broaden the law to include data brokers, holding them to the same standards as traditional consumer reporting agencies such as Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. The CFPB’s proposed rule redefines consumer reports to encompass any broker that obtains personal data related to credit and financial assessment.

The Trump-Vance transition team and the Biden administration signed a memorandum of understanding last week formally kicking off the process to hand over executive power — though the Trump team has decided not to accept some of the government’s available resources, including tech and information security provided by the General Services Administration. The transition team will reportedly run as a “self-sufficient organization” with existing security and information protections already built-in, utilizing private funding, according to the press release from the Trump transition team. That includes not using technology or buildings provided by the General Services Administration as part of the transition resources the agency is authorized and appropriated to provide. The Trump team said it “already has existing security and information protections built in, which means we will not require additional government and bureaucratic oversight.” The Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General called out the agency’s lack of an updated public strategy for artificial intelligence and underscored the need to be proactive in a report on its management and performance challenges last week. The comments came as part of the OIG’s determination that maintaining cybersecurity and keeping up with emerging technologies, such as AI, were among the top challenges for the DOJ. For AI specifically, the report underscored how long ago the department’s public AI strategy was released. The OIG’s office said in the report: “While the Department has made efforts to adapt to the change in the technological landscape, such as hiring the Department’s first Chief Science and Technology Advisor and Chief AI Officer, the most recent publicly issued strategy on AI from the Department—which outlines an AI adoption and coordination strategy with DOJ component responsibilities—is from 2020.” The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Telework programs in the federal government should benefit mission, operations and work-life balance at agencies, according to the Government Accountability Office. Yet some agencies are not fully aligned with key practices to ensure successful telework implementation, the watchdog found in a new report. The Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency all told the GAO that they have not yet fully evaluated the effects of telework on agency performance, it explains in the report. Similarly, the Department of Veterans Affairs cannot do so for the Veterans Benefits Administration because it does not have a system in place that provides telework agreement information in an accessible manner. U.S. Naval Forces Central Command is steaming ahead with experimental efforts to launch unmanned aerial vehicles from uncrewed surface vessels. The latest Digital Talon exercise, conducted earlier this month in the Middle East region, included a variety of robotic capabilities that could play a significant role in future conflicts. In a release, NAVCENT said: “Digital Talon 3.0 … tested the electronic and mechanical effectiveness of robotics and autonomous systems (RAS), the capabilities of over-the-horizon communications between unmanned systems, and testing aerial autonomous launch and recovery of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) off a unmanned surface vessel (USV).” The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Last week during a summit with Asian military leaders and their international partners, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin unveiled a first-of-its-kind vision statement outlining the United States’ near-term plans for deepening cooperation and accelerating modernization with allies in the region. The secretary and his delegation presented their U.S. Department of Defense Vision Statement for a Prosperous and Secure Southeast Asia on Thursday at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM-Plus). DefenseScoop, which was traveling with Secretary Austin last week, reported that multiple inclusions in that new roadmap prioritize joint military technology-centered initiatives intended to advance the individual and collective capacity of the nations involved. The Energy Department has a new deputy chief information officer. Dawn Zimmer, who previously directed business partnership services and focused on information technology at the Federal Aviation Administration, announced that she was filling the principal deputy chief information officer position. Brian Epley, who recently became the chief information officer at the Commerce Department, previously held the position. He left earlier this year. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

Sheena Burrell, the chief information officer of the National Archives and Records Administration, has taken a new job as chief innovation officer at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Burrell will join FDIC to lead its Office of Innovation — known also as the FDIC Tech Lab or FDiTech — on Dec. 2, an agency spokesperson confirmed to FedScoop. Her last day at NARA will be Nov. 30, a National Archives spokesperson said. In her absence, Gulam Shakir will serve as acting CIO “while we continue to plan for NARA’s digital transformation and future,” the NARA spokesperson said. Twelve senators on Wednesday signed a letter addressed to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, urging investigation into the Transportation Security Administration’s facial recognition technology “regime” as it looks to expand to more airports. Leading the bipartisan group was Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon. Their call for investigation follows TSA plans to introduce credential authentication technologies, or CAT units equipped with facial recognition and deployed at airport security checkpoints, at more than 430 airports. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ top IT official told House lawmakers on Wednesday that a larger budget and the ability to pay certain government workers more would improve the agency’s cybersecurity posture. Kurt DelBene, the VA’s assistant for information and technology and chief information officer, called during a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee hearing for the entire federal government to “take steps to increase the salaries” of tech workers who are classified as GS-2210 under the Office of Personnel Management. The CIO said existing salaries are “too low to be competitive,” even with incentives and benefits, and that the VA continues to face challenges in recruiting and retaining professionals with cyber expertise. The State Department on Wednesday announced a new, government-wide task force focused on content authentication. The group, which includes more than 20 federal agencies, is supposed to streamline the government’s international outreach on content authentication, which could help combat technology like deepfakes. The task force is charged with working with foreign governments and partners on developing the technical standards and capacities to detect this category of content, according to a statement shared with FedScoop ahead of the announcement. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

The leader of the Defense Department organization charged with investigating reports of “unidentified anomalous phenomena” laid out findings related to two high-profile incidents and another that he said hasn’t received as much attention from the public. The presentation by Jon Kosloski, director of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), came during a congressional hearing Tuesday with members of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. Lawmakers have been urging the Pentagon to be more transparent about its work on UAP issues and have raised national security concerns about these types of incidents. UAP, an acronym that refers to unidentified anomalous phenomena, is a modern term for UFOs and mysterious transmedium objects. During the hearing Kosloski walked the subommittee through the findings the AARO delivered on a trio of UAP cases referred to as the Go Fast, Puerto Rico and Mt. Etna incidents, the latter of which he said hasn’t received as much attention from the public. Congressional efforts to extend the Chief Data Officer Council past the end of the year got a boost Monday when a bipartisan House bill was introduced as the companion to earlier Senate legislation. The Modernizing Data Practices to Improve Government Act (H.R. 10151), introduced by Reps. Summer Lee, D-Pa., and Nancy Mace, R-S.C., calls for an extension to the council’s lifespan until 2031, while also requiring the CDO Council to report to Congress about data governance challenges that prevent the adoption of emerging tech across the federal landscape. Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Todd Young, R-Ind., introduced the Senate version of this bill in September.

After serving as the head of the Technology Transformation Services at GSA for the past two years, Ann Lewis announced recently she is stepping down from the role. Lewis led the TTS organization during a time of major AI adoption across government, workforce transformation and a greater focus on spreading use of the agency’s Login.gov single sign on platform. In a final interview with FedScoop, Lewis discusses those priorities for TTS going forward, as well as her journey into government, now that she’s stepping away. The new director of the Defense Department’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) is scheduled to meet with lawmakers in closed-door and open sessions Tuesday to discuss his organization’s activities investigating “unidentified anomalous phenomena” that have raised national security concerns. The hearing with the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities comes on the heels of the release of the Pentagon’s fiscal 2024 consolidated annual report on UAP — the modern term for UFOs and mysterious Restrictive software licensing practices are impacting multiple federal agencies in the form of cost increases and limited choices of cloud service providers (CSP) or cloud architecture, according to the Government Accountability Office. The Department of Justice, NASA, Department of Transportation and Department of Veterans all told the GAO that as result of restrictive practices in software licensing, the agencies either experienced or expected cost increases in acquisition, infrastructure and licensing. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.

As the White House gets ready to “pass the baton” to the incoming Trump administration, Federal CIO Clare Martorana said she is focused on cybersecurity issues and making sure her team does everything it can for their replacements to be set up for success. Over the remaining two months of the Biden administration, Martorana said in an interview with FedScoop on the sidelines of the ACT-IAC CX Summit on Friday that cyber is her top area of focus because “you need security, engineering, [and] competencies when you are contemplating the problem set in the solution you’re trying to design.” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin departed early Friday morning on his twelfth and final trip to the Indo-Pacific region, where he will engage in a series of bilateral and multilateral meetings with some of his closest colleagues across Australia, the Philippines, Laos and Fiji. “During this trip, we will deliver results to advance cooperation, strengthen our relationships, and build an enduring network of allies and partners. I am proud of the historic progress we’ve made over the last four years and the depth of continuing U.S. commitment to the region,” Austin said in a statement ahead of takeoff. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.